The post Crypto Needs Minimum Viable Decentralization appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Opinion by: Doug Colkitt, a founding contributor at Fogo  To adhere to its ethos of decentralization above all else, the crypto industry often forgets its core user: the trader. What exists today is an ecosystem that has prioritized philosophical principles instead of practical use cases — something that has simultaneously barred the most serious traders from participating and driven decentralized finance (DeFi) users to more centralized offerings. If DeFi is set to scale beyond speculation alone — and offer a meaningful alternative to TradFi — then the core focus must be performance. Enter minimum viable decentralization (MVD). MVD could offer a pragmatic blueprint to preserve censorship resistance without sacrificing the speed, reliability and usability that real markets rely on. Here’s how MVD is evolving in real time. TradFi is right where DeFi goes wrong The 1990s marked a historical shift for TradFi. Since the dawn of futures in the 19th century as a new way to hedge wheat and corn prices, these markets have evolved into one of the most liquid financial ecosystems ever.  The end of the 20th century marked a significant leap forward with the decline of manual inefficiencies. Thanks to electronic trading platforms, high-frequency trading (HFT) took the world by storm. TradFi laid the groundwork for technical infrastructure designed to serve its primary users — traders — by underscoring speed, reliability and execution. TradFi has scaled globally and gained institutional trust by giving traders exactly what they need to prosper. In contrast, DeFi was born due to ideology: It emphasizes decentralization at all costs, permissionless access and censorship resistance. In doing so, it’s inherited performance limitations such as sluggish blocktimes, unpredictable transaction inclusion and fragile finality.  For example, Ethereum’s 12-15 second block times render it unusable for HFT, forcing successful projects like dYdX to migrate entirely from…

---

Filed under: News - @ July 23, 2025 8:28 am